The latest Palin idiocy

I actually giggled when I read that Palin was throwing the term "blood libel" around, because it went beyond offensive into just plain daft. There was a shooting rampage in Tucson *and* Jews baking matzah with the blood of Christian babies, all rolled into one? That would be one helluva headline. I don't reckon it was deliberate: if you want to attack Jews, this would be an extremely peculiar way of doing it. I expect that she heard the term somewhere once, thought she understood it, didn't realise that it had a very specific and non-obvious meaning, and used it completely ignorantly; in other words, that she accidentally put her foot in it in a very big way. Palin isn't exactly renowned for her intelligence or erudition, and it's not as if she's from a very Jewish area. Of course, how all of her researchers and speechwriters let it slip through is another matter. But what is bothering me a little is that very few of the newspaper articles I've read correctly defines the blood libel, instead using vague sentences about general nasty religious libel. If "blood libel" was a general term, then Palin's slip-up wouldn't be quite as atrociously bad as it is.